Newsroom columnist Rod Oram reports from Egypt as the world gathers, again, to wrangle solutions to climate change
We have now reached a stage of “desperate hope,” Sir David Attenborough told delegates to the UN’s COP26 climate negotiations in Glasgow last November.
A year on, the world is in even more parlous a state as COP27 opened yesterday in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
Climate, geopolitics, political will, government leadership, and developing countries’ intense distrust of developed have all got far worse.
Seeking agreement on any issue will be much harder this year than previous hard-fought COPs such as Paris in 2015, Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s foreign minister and president of COP27, told the Guardian in a recent interview.
“Because of the current circumstances, geopolitical tensions and economic directions and pressures, it is quite different and more difficult,” he said.
The most vexed issue of all is how developed countries, which have caused the vast majority of climate change to date, compensate developing countries for the economic losses and physical damage climate causes.
It’s the “number one litmus test” of the negotiations, UN Secretary General, António Guterres, said last week. “Loss and damage have been the always-postponed issue. There is no more time to postpone it. We must recognise loss and damage and we must create an institutional framework to deal with it.”
Sure enough, the clashes began before COP27 opened. At 3pm on Saturday, delegates began discussing how the fraught subject would be handled in the conference agenda. The deadlocked negotiations paused at 1am Sunday. They resumed later in the morning, pushing back the opening of COP by some hours.
Developing countries won the agenda battle, though. "This creates for the first time an institutionally stable space on the formal agenda of COP and the Paris Agreement to discuss the pressing issue of funding arrangements needed to deal with existing gaps, responding to loss and damage," COP27 president Shoukry told the opening plenary.
But it’s only a partial victory. The loss and damage discussions will not involve liability or binding compensation. However, they are intended to lead to a conclusive decision "no later than 2024," Shoukry said. Pre-COP, Egypt had named it as its top priority for the negotiations.
China’s stance is one of myriad thorny issues. It’s demanding loss and damage compensation, even though it is the world’s largest emitter with a 30 percent share. Thus, China should give rather than take funds, the EU says.
The scale of the problem is vast, the Vulnerable 20 group of countries, reported in June. Damage to date has already reduced their cumulative growth by one-fifth, they said. The group, numbering 58 countries including Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa and other Pacific nations, number 1.4 billion people and they generate US$2.4 trillion of GDP. But they cause only 5 percent of global emissions.
Yet, as ever, the low cost and high benefits of making economies and societies climate compatible is often swept aside in the fiercely political debates over climate policy and action.
As Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the IMF, wrote in a blog last week:
“We estimate that the net cost of moving to clean technology—including the savings made by avoiding unnecessary investments in fossil fuels—would be around 0.5 percent of global gross domestic product in 2030. This is a tiny amount in comparison with the devastating costs of unchecked climate change.”
If in these negotiations developed countries embraced this solution for themselves, and massively helped developing countries do the same, COP27 would break the log jam. “Together for implementation” is one of the slogans for COP27. It’s still quite a lonely quest – though in fairness to the gentleman below, COP27’s security screening area was deserted two days before the meeting started.
Today, is the World Leaders Summit. Senior EU politicians will no doubt try to persuade sceptical developing countries that Europe really is ramping up its switch to renewables in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the halting of Russian fossil fuel imports.
This pitch will be led by Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, and Franz Timmermans, a former Dutch politician, and now a highly regarded EU executive vice president on climate, energy and green economy issues. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron will also contribute.
The new UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has changed his mind and is coming. But he has little climate credibility, not the least of which for moving Aloka Sharma, his climate minister, who was President of COP26 in Glasgow last year, out of Cabinet. Even less credible is the new Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, given her party are climate sceptics.
US President Joe Biden will come after Tuesday’s US mid-term elections. He will surely tout the massive investment to accelerate households’ take-up of renewable energy, which will reduce power costs – which will give credence to at least that part of the Inflation Reduction Act.
The US climate envoy John Kerry, a tireless and persuasive climate negotiator, will arrive earlier. He will play a leading role on big issues such as loss and damage.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is not coming, but Climate Minister James Shaw will for the political negotiations in the second week.
Similarly, Australia’s PM, Anthony Albanese won’t attend. Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen will lead Australia’s delegation.
Crucial no-shows, though, are Chinese President Xi Jinping, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The strengthening China-Russian-Indian geo-political axis has many internal conflicts on climate. Russian sees fossil fuels as a potent political and economic weapon, while favouring China and India with copious cheap supplies. China’s emissions from coal-fired electricity plants rose last year at their fastest rate in a decade, while India is finding it very hard to pull back on coal. Yet China and India are big on renewables and other clean tech.
But the near complete breakdown in US-Chinese relations is even more important for the climate, though, ending a short period when the two countries worked together to help shape and drive the global climate response.
Meanwhile, Egypt has responded to global pressure to reverse its prohibition of protests and demonstrations. Such activities help civil society delegates keep government negotiators’ feet to the fire.
But it’s a uniquely Egyptian concession. The government has created a “protest” area down the highway and well away from COP27. It has a row of white cabins between a carpark and a line of palm trees. It’s not obvious where protesters will congregate. But unlike traditional protest grounds, this one has some modern conveniences.
“It’s very chic, very clean. There are cafes and restaurants on site,” said Maj Gen Khaled Fouda, governor of South Sinai. But “no one is allowed here without registration.”
